


Scar Tissue

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Self-Harm, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:27:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4827389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where people have tattoos that mark those they will cherish the most, the Blood Gulch crew tries to grapple with their scars from those they've lost. And maybe help a few recover on the way.</p><p>There's more than one way to die. But there's also more than one way to live.</p><p>(Drabble Collection)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Might turn this into a verse. We'll see. I got a lot of other spinning plates.

“I feel like I don’t belong here.”

Wash says the words to himself more than anyone else. Even though he knows Tucker is in the room, knows Tucker can hear every word he says, they’re still words for him only. Tucker is sitting next to him in his pajamas, the man ran in when he heard Wash screaming from his nightmares, and Wash can feel the dent in the mattress from it.

He woke them up again. These men who took him in after everything he’s done. And Wash hates himself a little for it.

“Look man, that’s not true,” Tucker says. Wash doesn’t listen to him, instead grabbing his right wrist with his left hand. His long sleeves had rolled up, revealing the beginning of his soulmate tattoos. The ring of states around his wrist still lack color, nothing but white outlines. Like scars.

“Wash!” Tucker grabs his shoulder so tight that Wash almost jumps. He turns to look at his subordinate. Tucker’s hair is down, covering the tattoo he has for his son, but he’s rolled up his sleeves, which catches Wash by surprise. Soulmate tattoos are private. Those that can be covered usually are. Even Tucker, who sleeps without pants, is aware of that. “Wash look at this.” He’s pointing at a spot on his right arm.

Wash’s eyes trace their way up to the spot, passing the symbols for Alpha and Beta (both white harsh lines), a warthog (bright yellow and orange), and a picture of the moon (a deep, rich blue). The tattoo Tucker is pointing to is right on his upper tricep, yellow with grey outline, and while it is missing some of its color in spots, it’s clearly coming back.

Wash recognizes the shape. Washington. Tucker has the state of Washington on his arm. 

“Listen up,” Tucker says and Wash forces his gaze off the tattoo and onto Tucker’s face. He looks more serious than Wash thought him capable. “Back when I was in basic? This thing went white. Lost all its color overnight. Happened to Caboose too.” Wash tries to think about what that means, what that could mean, and the Counselor’s words from years back come to the forefront.

“There is more than one way to die, Agent Washington.”

Wash thinks of data fragmenting in his head and his tattoo going scar white on all his friends and shudders.

Tucker shakes him again. “Wash, you aren’t listening.” He points to the tattoo. “Since we dragged you here? It’s coming back. Color started coming in a month ago.”

Wash looks at the tattoo. Tries to picture color seeping from the center outwards. It’s hard to picture it ever being white. 

“So this shit about you not belonging here? Bull.” Tucker got up from Wash’s bed and tilted up his chin. “Fate fucking said so.”

He leaves after that. Wash watches him go, watches him not bother to roll down his sleeves and wonders if Tucker hid them before he came around. He looked down to his own arms. Pulling up the sleeve on his right is almost painful.

Past the ring of white states is color. Rich color, deep blues, brilliant reds, hints of violet. Wash pulls his gaze from a shotgun and a line of orange poetry to the tattoo on his upper tricep. This tattoo is aqua, sharp edges and Wash can remember tracing it as a child, relishing the alien shape. He does so now, following the edges with his pointer finger.

The alien sword on his skin seems to hum in the darkness.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When York dies, Carolina knows.

When his tattoo goes white, she screams.

It scares the entire subway she’s on, makes everyone jump to their feet as she clutches for her wrist. They’re all watching when she pulls up the sleeve there, looks at the state of New York go from a golden yellow to a pale, scar like, white.

She doesn’t pass out. She’s used to the sensation of the painful cold by now, both from lost tattoos and the fall. The onlookers call the EMTS anyway. 

They leave her alone when she explains that she’s a vet. They realize her tattoos belong to those in space, those they can’t help. Carolina hates them for that, just a little.

Her father doesn’t call to give her the news. She’s forced to hack the server instead, to see if the death is a literal one. When she finds the death notice, she’s not surprised. 

There are many ways to die, but Carolina has rarely been lucky enough to be treated to anything less than literal.

For the first time since being sent home, Carolina wonders if her tattoos went grey on everyone else as well. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is more than one day to die.  
> Huge TW for self harm, possible suicide attempt, be cautious!

Carolina had heard about people whose tattoos went white while they still breathed.

It’d been a topic of interest for her, when she was a teenager. She’d spent weeks on the subject, looking it up in textbooks, studying it online, checking out the many cases of those who went white and still had a pulse. There were plenty of accounts, spanning from WWII to the modern era, and Carolina drank them up, wondering if she would be so lucky to be one of the exceptions.

She wasn’t. Her mother’s body was found a month after she started her search. The sun on her ankle stayed a white scar.

She wondered what it’d be like though, to be so fortunate. To think one of your loved ones was gone only for them to come back. She dreamed of it some nights, he mother appearing on her doorstep, whole and alive. Still smiling.

“ _I was never gone, sunshine. I just lost myself for awhile._ ”

Wash lied on the bed, sedated. The circles under his eyes were black. Claw marks from where he tried to claw out his own veins were barely covered by bandages. The Washington state tattoo on Carolina’s wrist was nothing more than a scar.

She was a fool. A pulse didn’t mean one was alive. 

Death could touch a mind as well. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Donut meets his match.

Donut always thought it was ironic that he had a soulmate tattoo of a bandaid on his knee. 

He tripped a lot as a child, stumbling over himself and scraping up his knees almost on a weekly basis. His Moms kept a constant supply of bandages as a result, and often Donut would find himself sitting on the kitchen counter as one of them ruffled through the first aid kit. The bandages rarely overlapped his soulmate tattoo exactly, but his mothers would always tease him about the purple tattoo.

“Maybe they’re a doctor, Frankie,” his mother had said once. “You’d do well with a doctor.”

Donut had never believed them. Tattoos rarely lined up that neatly. None of his tattoos for Red team matched their respective professions after all. But when Donut slipped in front of Doc only for the man to take out a nice purple bandage, Donut found himself second guessing his once deeply held beliefs. 

It was only once he applied the bandage back in his room did he finally let it go. It would be foolish to deny it now. Not when the purple bandage Doc had given him overlapped his tattoo perfectly. 


	5. Chapter 5

Grif used to write poetry.

It was stupid, in retrospect. He was in charge of raising his sister; he didn’t have time to be dabbling in the finer arts. Investing in the study of the English language was foolish at best, a task best left to kids who had trust funds and support structures. Not Grif, who found himself without a safety net or a leg to stand on.

He did it anyway. It was calming. It was nice. It was a distraction.

And he was fucking good.

Good enough to win a few competitions back when he was in school, at least. After he got drafted, after everything went to hell, he still didn’t end up kicking the habit, scribbling down lines in basic when his commander wasn’t looking. Writing about what interested him. How interested him. 

Grif traced his pointer finger across the flesh that was now his right arm. It was pink and freckles, and the tattoos on the surface of his new skin felt far too exposed, even for secrets that weren’t his. There was a football helmet near his shoulder, a glass of wine on his tricep, a wrench on his left pinkie. 

A stanza of poetry on his wrist.

A stanza of bad poetry.

His bad poetry.

_Falling for you was a gift_

_and I’d hit the ground again_

_to see you smile_

_your freckles, like stars_

Grif remembered the poem well. It’d been one of the few he scrapped entirely, on the basis of being too mushy. He could remember when he wrote it too, sitting on top of their barracks with Simmons. Watching the stars.

Grif looked at his other wrist. The wrist that was his skin, his tattoos. Took a look at what was written there. Code. Binary to be exact. He’d looked up the meaning in high school.

_I love you._

Grif tangled his hands together, twisted art and science, Grif and Simmons, and tried to figure out what to do with that.


End file.
